Thoughts on the Social Graph (2007)
bradfitz.com
bradfitz.com
> A centralized "owner" of the social graph is bad for the Internet.
versus
> Establish a non-profit and open source software (with copyrights held by the non-profit) which collects, merges, and redistributes the graphs from all other social network sites into one global aggregated graph.
Yes, the author claims this is only at the beginning a centralized institution,
> While the non-profit's servers and databases will initially be centralized, ensure that the design is such that others can run their own instances, sharing data with each other.
but in reality everybody who works with decentralized software like XMPP, Mastodon, GNU Social, Diaspora and various "darknet" nodes knows how difficult it is to get users to use the software/join the node.
In fact, I don't think a company like Facebook (10 years after this article was published) will ever implement an external social graph that allows users to pull data from their platform. Users should be more sensitive to the features the products they use support. A platform that implements a protocol like OStatus is a far superior product to invest in as a closed monopole.
Read it, thought I'd read it before, noticed the old social networks, halted at FOAF... checked the date.
Still valid though.
> You can either have a decentralized, communally owned social graph (like Fitzpatrick envisioned) or good privacy controls, but not the two together.
We already have a communally owned social graph in the form of publicly viewable FLOSS mailing list archives. If the lack of good privacy controls opens up the community to risks, then one should be able to assess the risks by mining the data in those archives.
So has anyone ever written a paper about mining FLOSS mailing list archives for fun/profit?
Might homomorphic encryption change this?
To answer your question: technically, yes. But I don't think it will practically change things until we have clear, concrete ways to measure how what we're already doing is bad.